IV.

ENTHUSIASM.

No life can be lifted above stale mediocrity without the inward glow and divine passion called enthusiasm. Kindled from truth and eternal principles, it is "God in us." Emerson truly says that "every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm." Lord Lytton says, "Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it." Enthusiasm gives a man irresistible power. What power Christians would be in the world if each one could honestly say with Brainerd, "Oh, that I were a flaming fire in the hands of my God!" We need at this time what the Chinese convert told the missionary his people wanted, "men with hot hearts to tell us of the love of Christ." Do you find in this world lukewarmness in any one department of real life? Do you find anything like apathy when men believe their interests or safety are involved? It is only skepticism

that suffers enthusiasm in the things of Cæsar and will not endure enthusiasm in the more important things of God. We profess to believe that the world of sinners outside of Christ will be eternally lost unless turned from their evil ways; and yet we so live by our indifference as to give the lie to such profession, or else stamp ourselves without the commonest feeling of humanity. It is impossible to believe the truths of the Gospel and yet be apathetic. I do not believe in religious excitement, but I do believe in excitement in religion. The cross is the most restless and resistless of agitators, and if your religion does not excite you, it is because you have no religion. If you believe the tear-compelling story of Jesus and his love, the best feelings and sympathies of your nature will be roused to their highest pitch, and you will love with an enthusiastic love, and praise with intense gratitude him who so loved and bled and died for us. If you feel no quenchless love, fiery zeal, and glowing enthusiasm for Christ's glory, you may disguise it as you like, but indeed and in truth you do not believe that Christ died that sinners might be redeemed; or you believe in Calvary just as you believe in Gettysburg; you believe in Jesus Christ as you believe in Washington, or in some dead

fact which belongs to history and has no living connection with you or bearing on your destiny. We hear much about the triumphant march of the Roman Catholic Church. To what is the Roman Church indebted for its triumph? To the indifference of Protestants and the enthusiasm of Catholics. It is because the Catholics are thoroughly devoted and in earnest, and are prepared to suffer in order to support what they believe to be true. If you believe the Gospel, you must be influenced by it. If twelve million Romans sacrificed their lives to gratify the ambition of Cæsar; if four million Frenchmen laid down their lives in the war-path cut by Napoleon through Europe and whitened foreign shores with their bones-soldiers of Christ, are you not willing to sacrifice worldly ambition, to sacrifice all for Christ? God grant it!

V.

THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE.

THE theater owns its origin to religion. In Greece, India, and China the drama was originally a religious ceremony, and it was intended to promote religion. In the course of time the drama ceased to be a religious ceremony and became a work of art.

Every student of church history knows that the modern drama sprang originally from the church. In the dark ages the priests put the whole of theology on the stage, and in this way the rude and unlettered mob that gathered on saints' days were taught in an effective way the truths of religion, so that in the Christian era the first theaters were the churches and the first actors the priests.

But secular competition grew apaçe, and in 1378 the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral petitioned Richard III. to stop certain dramatic performances which were being gotten up in London outside the church. Why? Because the cathedral clergy of St.

Paul's had spent so much money on church scenery and costumes inside the cathedral, they were eager to crush all secular competition.

In Elizabeth's reign the secular drama had grown so popular that a preacher exclaims, "Woe is me! At the play-house it is not possible to get a seat, while at the church vacant seats are plenty." The clergy did not object to the principle of acting, or because the play was immoral, except when it satirized the drunken and smoking rector. Nor did the clergy object to the play because it hurt the people, but because it pleased them. They groaned when the people shouted.

God has implanted a dramatic element in most of our natures; recognized and cultivated it in the Bible. It is not something built up outside of ourselves by Thespis and Eschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and Terence and Plautus and Seneca and Congreve and Farquhar and Corneille and Alfieri and Goldsmith and Sheridan and Shakespeare. Man is not responsible for the dramatic element in his soul, but for the perversion of it.

If vacant seats are so plenty in the church, whose fault is it? The human mind is the same in the pew as in the theater. The world suffers more from too little dramatic power